


Family Secrets

by WhoRUGurl



Series: She-Ra 10 Years Later AU [1]
Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: (No beta we die like men), Abortion Hidden as Miscarriage, Alien Biology, Alien Pregnancy, Alien Reproduction, Angst, Child Abuse, Child Soldiers, Child Soldiers giving birth to children who are raised to be more Child Soldiers, F/F, False Accusations, Fluff, Forced Abortion, Forced adoption, Future Fic, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Kid Fic, Kidnapping, Mentions of (deep breath), More than I have already tagged but I don't know what else to put, Non-Graphic Descriptions of Pregnancy, Suicidal Thoughts, Teen Pregnancy, There is a lot here, This is a Fuck Shadow Weaver fic, Underage Drinking, Underage Sex, hybrid pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-11
Updated: 2020-08-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:33:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25845880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhoRUGurl/pseuds/WhoRUGurl
Summary: Glimmer can tell her wives have been hiding something from her for a while. Like, longer than they've been married, a while. One night, she finally manages to confront them about it. How will she react to the truth?
Relationships: Adora/Catra (She-Ra), Adora/Catra/Glimmer (She-Ra), Adora/Glimmer (She-Ra), Catra/Glimmer (She-Ra)
Series: She-Ra 10 Years Later AU [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1875457
Comments: 4
Kudos: 91





	Family Secrets

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of a Future AU that my friend Cal and I made with some of our friends on our discord server. Some important notes about this AU include:  
> -In the AU, the show only spanned about one year from beginning to end.  
> -Glimmer was about 18 at the start of the show and 19 at the end, and Catra and Adora were 20 at the start of the show and 21 at the end.  
> -Glitradora have a total of 4 children in this AU, Finn (born 4 years before the start of the show), Mara (born 4 years after the end of the show), and the twins, Micah "Mikey" and Angella "Angel" (born 9 years after the end of the show). Finn and Mara are Catra and Adora's biological children, and the twins are Catra and Glimmer's biological children.  
> -We actually made the four kids before Finn became a thing, but instead of adding a fifth child, we decided to make the eldest child (who has the backstory given in this fic) Finn, and made the name we had given them (Adra "Addy") their dead name given to them by Shadow Weaver.  
> -There are other children of other ships in the AU, including ones that were already born prior to this fic, but they aren't relevant to this particular story.

There are times when Glimmer looks over at her wives and sees a change in them, a change she couldn’t quite decipher. She knew how they looked when a particularly painful memory from their childhood was brought up, but there were times when an extra, distinct shadow passed over their faces. 

Like when Scorpia talked about how, growing up in the Horde, she would have faint memories of her mothers late at night and start to miss them so much she would end up crying herself to sleep (at the time, Glimmer had just figured they had similar memories of their own parents, and how while Catra’s might still be out there, Adora’s were likely gone). Or whenever they were performing a rescue mission at one of the many Horde nurseries that were still operating and scattered around the world, and they would see a set of catlike ears and long tail on a child (Glimmer also felt a strong pang in her chest whenever she saw them, and figured they too were imagining Mara there, growing up like they did, which, while not untrue, was probably not the whole case, considering they had been reacting like that since well before Mara was even a concept to them). 

Or like a few hours ago, when their three-year-old daughter had run into their room, shouting about how one of the castle guards who had grown up in the Horde told her some stories of his childhood, and that she was glad that _she_ never grew up there. 

While she, again, figured the tension in their bodies, the haunted looks in their eyes, and the way their hands shook afterwards, was yet again a result of their imagination of Mara having grown up in that environment, it was just how long those symptoms lasted that told her there was something different to this. It was late that night, long after Glimmer had tucked Mara in for bed and given her kiss goodnight, her wives still looking as though they’d seen a ghost, when she decided to ask them about it. 

“So,” she started suddenly, unintentionally loud, causing herself to wince at the sharp noise. The room had been uncomfortably quiet prior to her speaking, Adora clearly pretending to read some old First Ones book in bed, while Catra had been steadily writing something in her journal at her desk. Because Glimmer was laying in bed next to Adora (and thus able to notice the fact that she hadn’t really been reading the book in her hands, lingering on one pair of pages for just less than a suspicious amount of time, before turning to another set of pages), the blonde had unfortunately caught the brunt of the loudness in her voice, and as a result, jumped so violently that she ended up dropping her book on the floor. It landed with a heavy thud, which only served to startle her further. Catra, on the other hand, merely dropped her pencil on the desk. Glimmer winced again. “Sorry. That was kinda loud.” 

Catra sighed, “Nah, it’s fine. What’s up?”

“Well...I-uh...was wondering about before.” At the raise of Catra’s eyebrow, Glimmer continued, “When Mara was talking about the guard and how she was glad she didn’t grow up in the Horde, you know? You guys seemed kinda...off. And more off than you usually do when you’re thinking about your childhood or when you’re clearly imagining Mara growing up like that.” She added the last sentence when she saw Adora’s mouth start to open. Her add-on only seemed to startle the two former soldiers further. 

“Heh, what do you mean?” Adora asked, nervously. When Glimmer turned to look her right in the eyes, she noticed them directed over at Catra instead. Catra seemed to be returning the gaze, looking equally nervous. This, to her, confirmed her suspicion that the two of them had been hiding something from her (that is, if the whispered, tense conversations she would sometimes walk in on occasionally, only for them to cease the moment she entered the room, didn’t already confirm this). 

Glimmer frowned. “I know you guys haven’t been as honest with me as you could be. Part of me has always just said that you would tell me when you were ready, but it’s been about seven years since I first saw you react to something the way you reacted earlier.” Her wives’ eyes flung to her, surprised. She reached over and grabbed Adora’s right hand, which had been clutching tightly to the leg of her sleep shorts. Eventually, Adora loosened her grip, and allowed Glimmer’s fingers to thread through the gaps of her own. At the comforting feeling of her wife’s palm pressed against her own, her calloused fingertips brushing gently across the back of her hand, and the steady, circular motion of Adora’s thumb swiping slowly against hers (an instinctual action of the much taller woman whenever she was holding anyone’s hand), she felt her growing anxiety lessen. Adora herself seemed to have had a piece of her tension released from her shoulders. She considered beckoning Catra over to lay with them, but for now, it seemed as though she was still too apprehensive to join them on the bed. Glimmer sighed again, and continued, “The first time I saw you two react the way you did earlier was before our first mission to a Horde nursery. In fact, if I remember correctly, it was the first time you told us about them. You looked as though...as though you were being _haunted_ by something. As though a ghost had been following you for years and the only way to get rid of it was to go to these nurseries, to rescue all of those children from the remains of the Horde. At first I thought it was just you guys not wanting anymore kids to grow up the way you did-“

“We didn’t, and still don’t,” Catra interrupted defensively, crossing her arms and curling her legs up a bit. 

“-which I _know_ ,” Glimmer replied, sending her a comforting look. “But it was more than that. I saw that it was more when we were on that first mission and you found a Magicat kitten who looked startlingly like Catra, and wouldn’t stop staring at them. Even then, I thought you were just remembering her when she was younger-“

“I definitely was,” Adora said, equally as defensive as Catra had been.

“-which, _again_ , I _know_ . That wasn’t what made me realize that the look you had on your faces was that much different from when you were normally thinking about your childhood. It was the fact that, after a while of looking at the child, you seemed to be almost _disappointed_ by something. And then when they said their age, you seemed even _more_ disappointed.” As she spoke, she noticed their eyes drop down to their laps, looking guilty, as though they had been caught in some devious act. “What...what was it you saw that disappointed you? Why did their age disappoint you?”

Their eyes continued to stay downwards for a bit as they remained silent, and Glimmer decided to let them have a minute or two to let them process what she had said and figure out a response. Their shoulders had both slumped now, the tension gone, and what looked like defeat in their expressions now, as though they realized that she had caught them in their omission of the truth and thus, were backed into a corner and forced to reveal the truth. She winced; she hadn’t wanted them to feel like they _had_ to tell her what they were hiding, especially if it was something so painful they’d hidden it through three-and-a-half years of dating and another three years of marriage. She just wanted to let them know she knew that they were hiding something, and to at least give them some preparation time to reveal it to her, if they did at all.

“You guys don’t have to tell me, by the way. Especially not right now.” They looked up at her, startled, before quickly turning their eyes to one another’s again for yet another silent conversation (While the three of them all had their own shared “language” of silent conversation, it seemed as though Catra and Adora always had a second one for when they were talking about things they didn’t even want to let _her_ in on. At the beginning of her relationship with them, it had been one of her greater insecurities, another thing that made her feel like a third wheel in her own relationship. Even after the feeling was somewhat abated by the realization that neither of them understood _her_ silent conversations with Bow, she still felt a little hurt by it, until one time that she decided to interrupt one of them to ask what it was about. As it turns out, the conversation had been about an event from when they were 16 that involved a smuggled bottle of vodka, a pair of depressed teenagers, a recent event that had changed their lives, and a particularly high rooftop. By the end of their explanation, she wound up sobbing horribly as she clutched both of her crying lovers to her chest, somehow fitting both of them in her lap despite the fact that Catra was around 5 inches taller than her and Adora was almost a full _foot_ taller than her. That day, she realized something: sometimes, there were things about her loves that were too hard for her to hear, and they didn’t want her to have to hear. _Maybe this is one of them_ , she thought. _But even then, this seems like it’s haunted them for far too long and far too often for them to_ not _share. They need to get it off their chests eventually._ ).

Eventually, Catra sighed. “No, no. This...this is something you should know. We’ve just...we’ve been too scared to tell you.”

Adora nodded, “You deserve to know. This is something that may, eventually-” she paused, before pressing on, a hint of desperation to her voice as she said her next word, “ _hopefully_ , come back into our lives.”

“Even though it should _still_ be in our lives,” Catra whispered under her breath bitterly. Adora’s frown deepened as she said it. 

“It wasn’t your fault, Catra. There wasn’t anything we could do.”

“There wasn’t anything _you_ could do. I should have-“

“Should have what? Disobeyed a superior officer and risked severe punishment? And then have it all be for nothing?” There was a rising level of exasperation in her voice, as though they’d argued about this 1000 times before (which, considering just how long they’d been keeping this secret, they probably had).

“Should have _fought back_ . And you know as well as I do that it wouldn’t have been for _nothing_.” 

“Not _nothing_ , but it would have been useless. Eventually we’d have lost, anyways.”

“But if I won-“

“Even _if_ you’d won, we still wouldn’t have known what to do. We didn’t know anything about how to do it.”

“Still-“

“Guys!”

They stopped and turned to look at Glimmer, who was holding her hands with her palms out towards them, urging them to ceasefire in their argument. When she realized she had their full attention, the Queen of Bright Moon looked over at her Magicat wife. “Catra,” she began, “come over here.” At her raised eyebrow, Glimmer went, “come on.” She held her hand up with her palm facing herself, then bent all of her fingers besides her thumb, before straightening them, and bending them again, in a gesture reflecting her words.

After a moment of reluctance, Catra got up from the desk chair, and walked over to the bed, sitting on the foot of the mattress. At Glimmer’s repetition of the gesture, she came closer, eventually coming close enough to be within arm’s reach of both of her wives. Glimmer took the opportunity and grabbed her gently, before dragging her even closer to them. She managed to sneak in a kiss to her cheek, too, the familiar sensation of the fur on it brushing against her nose and lips calming her nerves the same way Adora’s hand that was still held in her own did. When she pulled back, she said, “Catra, it doesn’t matter to me whose fault it was. This is something that affected both of you so greatly that you’re still not over it. _That’s_ what matters to me. Even if fault did matter to me, Adora insists it _isn’t_ yours. Please. Just...tell me what happened.”

Catra looked down, but looked up again when Adora reached out and brushed her free hand against the fur at the side of her neck. The blonde sat up further, pulling Catra’s head towards her so that when she managed to get into a sitting position on the bed, their foreheads were touching. Catra reached up and gently wrapped her hand around the arm that was holding her. Adora kissed her cheek, then whispering something in her ear. Catra’s shoulders slumped, but she nodded, and when Adora nuzzled her nose against hers, she reciprocated the action with the same amount of comforting affection. Afterwards, they pulled back enough that while they were each in their own space, they were still touching, Adora’s hand now brushing against her wife’s side, while her arm was still being held. They both sighed.

“So-“

“It was-“

After hearing the other begin to speak at the same time as them, they stopped, staring at each other. 

“Anyways-“

“Well-“

They stopped again. Glimmer chuckled awkwardly, “Maybe one at a time?” 

Catra grimaced. “Adora, you should tell it.”

“Are you sure?” There was concern in the Princess of Power’s eyes as she asked, but instead of responding verbally, Catra just nodded. “Alright.”

She took another breath, “So…” She pursed her lips, thinking of where to begin, and after figuring out an appropriate way to do so, started again, “You remember how we told you that there wasn’t exactly a lot of, uh, _Sex Ed_ ...in the Horde?” Glimmer nodded, brow furrowed as she wondered about the relevance of it. “Well, uh, that didn’t stop us from, y’know, _having_ sex.”

Glimmer snorted, half amused, “Of course not.” 

“Yeah. So, uh, like a lot of the other cadets around us, we were, um…”

“Having sex? Adora, we have a child together. Why do you get so flustered when you say the word ‘sex’ around us? Besides, I already know that you two were having sex while you were in the Horde,” Glimmer said, slightly more amused than before. When Adora shrugged, her face flush, Glimmer reached over and kissed her on the cheek, “Keep going.”

“Oh, uh, yeah. So we were...having sex. And we weren’t exactly being, y’know... _careful_ about it.” 

Catra hummed in agreement, “There wasn’t exactly a lot of ways to practice safe-sex when the option isn’t a, given to you, or b, explained to you in the first place.” 

Glimmer mulled over the words in her mind. As she processed them, a realization of what they were implying started to dawn on her. “Wait-“ 

There was a knowing look on Catra’s face as she placed her free hand on Glimmer’s knee. “Hey, you’re gonna wanna hear all of this.” 

Glimmer, now shaky-breathed with shock at the revelation, turned to Adora, partially seeking further confirmation, and partially to urge her to continue. When she found the same look on Adora’s face, she squeezed her hand tighter, and let out a staggered exhale. At the sound, Adora resumed her story, “So, yeah. You probably already figured out what happened from that. When...when I first started seeing signs, I had no idea what was going on. I had never...I’d never _met_ a-a pregnant woman before.” She let out a heavy exhale after saying that, as if the word ‘pregnant’ was some hard to pronounce word she had never said aloud before. “I just thought I was sick, y’know? I was throwing up, and my mood would change at the drop of a hat, and-though I didn’t find out until Mara that these were symptoms of a First Ones pregnancy and not just some weird coincidence-I felt more energetic than usual and was hungry all the time, even for things I usually _hated_ eating.”

“I had to be the one to force her to go to the infirmary eventually,” Catra interjected, “otherwise she would have just kept on going until she was actually showing and our superior officers would’ve had to say something. It took me 3 weeks.” She chuckled about something, though the amusement in her laugh was small, “Imagine the look on the nurse’s face when Adora told her she didn’t get periods normally.”

Glimmer snorted shakily at the image. She remembered her own reaction to the revelation, having been both shocked and slightly embittered. She hadn’t known, at the time, that Adora was a First One, and certainly hadn’t known that First Ones don’t have a menstrual cycle. (As it turns out, despite their overwhelming resemblance to humans on the outside, on the inside, First Ones were _completely_ different from humans.) “Wouldn’t she have known, though? You guys told me once that they did regular physicals there.”

Adora waved her off. “She was new. _Anyways_ , she actually was pretty convinced at that point that I wasn’t pregnant, but insisted I take a test anyways.”

“And it came back positive?”

“Eheh. Nope.”

Glimmer’s brow furrowed. “What?” 

“It was probably just another case of First Ones biology not responding the same way a human’s biology would. The nurse ended up being so confused by the whole situation she just told me to go about my normal business while playing it safe, and then she’d check on me in about two weeks to see if I was feeling the same.”

“And you weren’t. Because if you had already been sick that long-“

“I was nearly two months pregnant? Yeah.” (First Ones pregnancies, as it turns out, did not move at the same rate as humans. Neither did Magicat pregnancies. When Adora was pregnant with Mara, she had only been so for 6 months, before Mara had, rather unceremoniously, made her arrival. Apparently, human and Magicat pregnancies lasted around 6-and-a-half to 7 months. Adora had told them, though, based on some books she read that mentioned the length of First Ones pregnancies and Magicat pregnancies, that she figured-)

Glimmer blinked. Adora had _told_ them. “Is...is this why you knew how long you were gonna be pregnant with Mara?” She remembers suddenly how quickly Catra had agreed with Adora’s hypothesis. “And why _you_ agreed with her?”

They both winced guiltily. “Yeah,” Catra responded, “Sorry, Glim.” Adora nodded, whispering a quiet “sorry” as she brought their joined hands to her mouth and kissed the back of Glimmer’s.

Glimmer sighed. “It’s fine. Honestly, part of me knew that there was something weird about the way you answered it and-wait…Does Doctor Anya know about this?” Adora winced again in response. 

“I...I kinda had to tell her. Especially considering there were apparently ‘signs’ that I-I’d been pregnant before. And I didn’t want to spend months being monitored again like last time. So I just...told her everything I knew. I’m...I’m sorry.”

Glimmer pursed her lips, but nodded. “No, I get it. That was kind of a need-to-tell situation. That does explain why she of all people didn’t question a lot of what you said about what you thought the length was going to be. You should, uh, keep going. Sorry I keep interrupting.”

“Nah, it’s fine. You have questions about it, which is understandable. Anyways, uh. Right! So I was about 2 months along. Which means that uh, there really wasn’t much of a need to do a checkup considering I had started showing. That, at least, was what put the nurse solidly on the side of ‘pregnant’. After that, I wasn’t allowed to take part in training.”

“Really? That soon?”

“Well, we were being trained how to _fight_.”

“You...have a point. Did anyone else find out?”

“Oh yeah,” Catra replied, “people found out _real_ quick. Word spread like wildfire. There weren’t exactly any confidentiality agreements that the physicians in the Horde had to follow. Besides, ‘Star cadet pulled from training for the time being because she’s going to have a baby in a few months’? Talk about juicy gossip? Pretty much everyone on base knew in less than a week. Oh! Little fun fact! You see, Adora was far from the first soldier, or even just cadet, to get pregnant, and because intimacy and romance wasn’t exactly encouraged in the Horde, people didn’t usually know exactly who knocked someone up. There was a tradition around the base where we would bet on just that.”

Adora hummed. “I was mostly wrong.”

“Yes, you were. I was right like, what, 60% of the time?”

“Eh, sounds about right.”

“So,” Glimmer started, “Were you…?”

“Yes.”

“Mm.”

“Ah,” Catra began, “But here’s the thing. Adora was the subject of the bettong pool, yes...but it was disbanded for her after a few days where everybody bet for the same person. Nobody knows what the other people bet on until they’ve bet so they don’t think about being that one guy who has to bet against the pack just ‘cause.” 

“Lemme guess, they all bet on you?”

“Correct.”

“Honestly, I’m not that surprised.”

“Eh.”

“So, then there wasn’t really like...a fallout or anything?”

“Oh,” Adora replied, “No, there was.”

“Oh?”

Catra only had two words to offer as a response. “Shadow Weaver.”

Glimmer’s face fell. She had almost forgotten about her. Everything had just seemed to be going okay in their story, and she’d been caught in the trap of believing that it was going to all stay okay.

Catra went on, her voice bitter, and her eyes watering slightly, “Yeah. Like I said. Word traveled fast. I guess I should have expected the response we got when _she_ found out.”

“H-how bad?”

“Bad. Probably one of her worst responses to anything I’ve ever done. I’m almost surprised she didn’t kill me, let alone physically hurt me at all.”

“Catra,” her wives gasped simultaneously, but they were waved off by the woman.

“No. Don’t try to act like I’m wrong, and like she wouldn’t have.” With the lack of responses other than gaping mouths, she went on, “I thought so. She screamed at me for _hours_ , though. Nearly hit me at one point. How _dare_ I put some _filthy_ hybrid in her favorite pupil? Lord knows it can’t _possibly_ have been a two person job.”

Glimmer’s jaw was practically on the floor. “She tried to accuse you of-“

“Yeah, but not to my face.” Catra turned to Adora, Glimmer’s gaze following. 

Adora sighed. “Yeah. She, uh, cornered me and interrogated me about everything. The whole time it seemed like she was trying to convince me that it hadn’t been my choice, that she’d somehow forced me to-“ She shook her head. “Even if she were to try and accuse her directly, no one would have believed her. I would’ve denied it, and besides, Catra and I were as close to being in a relationship as you could be in the Horde, and everyone knew that. We’d also been, uh...caught in the act before. And, as you know, I am a pretty... _enthusiastic_ partner. They’d have seen through Shadow Weaver’s bullshit like it was glass.”

“That’s such shit. Fuck her.”

Catra snorts. “It’s not exactly off brand for her. But yeah, fuck her. She also said some other nasty shit to you throughout the rest of your pregnancy, right Adora? She iced me out entirely. I don’t think she said a word to me after that initial verbal beating.”

Adora rubbed Catra’s arms comfortingly as she answered, “Yeah. She would interrogate me about once a day for a while. There was, uh,” she released a shaky breath, “there was one point where she tried to convince me to, to end it.”

Glimmer was floored. “I swear to God, that woman continues to stun me to this day in just how _low_ of a person she could be. She actually tried to pressure you into aborting your baby? Without asking if that’s what you wanted?”

“Yeah. She even tried to convince me by telling me that it would just look like I lost the baby naturally.”

Glimmer shook her head as she tried to process just how much of an evil _bitch_ Shadow Weaver was. “Fuck her.”

Adora laughed softly, though the humor didn’t reach her eyes. “Yeah. Fuck her.”

There was a silence that settled around them, uneasy and sorrowful. There were still so many questions swirling around her mind. One in particular kept slamming its way to the front more often than the others, but it was the second most common front-and-center question that she decided to break the silence by asking, “Did...did you guys _want_ the baby?”

Catra tensed up, and, instead of responding, she began to look around the room at anything but her wives. Glimmer was confused by this; why was she avoiding the question?

Adora, on the other hand, did not shy away from the question, though it took her a minute to compose herself to respond. 

“Yeah. I really, _really_ wanted them.”

Glimmer let out a gasp of sympathy. Catra, however, froze, eyes wide. _Oh_ , Glimmer thought, _they never discussed that. This seems like a question they’ve never really even asked-_

Catra let out sudden high pitched noise in the back of her throat, before pitching forward into Adora, her face falling into the crook of her neck. For a moment, both Glimmer and Adora were too stunned to say anything, but when the sound of a sob came from the blonde’s collar, they both reacted quickly. Adora wrapped her free arm around her, and (to Glimmer’s momentary selfish displeasure) let go of the queen’s hand to wrap that arm around her, too. Glimmer, in turn, moved closer, so she could wrap her arms around them. Adora briefly pulled her right arm back so that it would be wrapped around both her and Catra. In the next few minutes, the only words that passed between them were soft, comforting words. 

When Catra finally calmed down a bit, she sniffled, before saying, “I didn’t-I thought you didn’t-“

Adora’s face crumpled, “Oh, _Catra_.” 

“You always tell me there was nothing we could have done-“

“Because there _wasn’t_ . That didn’t mean I didn’t _want_ to do something. I wished we could have run off with them, far away from the Fright Zone. But we didn’t know anything about what the outside world was like, and we didn’t know anything about raising a child. We were just _kids_ , Catra.”

Catra buried her face further into Adora’s skin. “I know. I know. I-I just thought-“ She sighed, “I thought you didn’t want to raise a child with me.” She let out a sad noise that sounded vaguely like it should have been a laugh. “Guess I was off the mark with that one, huh?”

Glimmer ‘hmmed’. “I don’t know. I think the little blonde laying in the room just down the hall might not be proof enough.”

Catra laughed, this time a little more genuine. Adora let out a little chuckle. She moved her arms slightly, transferring her left hand to Catra’s ear to begin lightly scratching behind it, and her right hand to the back of Glimmer’s neck to scratch at a sensitive spot. Both of them let out little pleased noises. As they did, Adora’s smile sweetened further, and she said, “Maybe we need a few more to really prove it.”

That caused the other two to pause, and Adora to start blushing as she realized what she’d said, stopping her scratching. Glimmer and Catra looked at each other, exchanging a few silent words.

 _Maybe?_ , the Magicat’s blue and green eyes asked her wife.

 _Maybe_ , the queen responded.

“Maybe,” they both said aloud. Still blushing, Adora nodded and resumed scratching with both of her hands, much to her wives’ pleasure. As a happy silence settled over them, a loud purr sounded over and over again. The sound soothed the last of Glimmer and Adora’s nerves, and a wave of affection came over both of them as the simultaneously leaned over and kissed the Magicat on each cheek. Despite scrunching up her nose in faux-annoyance, her purr crescendoed the longer their lips remained on her cheeks. 

Eventually, the three of them all settled down, each of them laying on their sides. Catra was in the middle, Adora acting as a big spoon for her, while Glimmer’s front was pressed against Catra’s as she was clutched against her wife's soft, fur covered chest. As they began to drift towards sleep, Glimmer realized something rather suddenly: she had never asked about what happened. She was conflicted; they were nearly asleep and feeling happy, did she really wanna ruin that?

There was suddenly a shuffling above her. “Yo, Sparkles, are you okay?” Glimmer blinked, and looked up. Catra was staring down worriedly at her, and Adora was lifting her head up so she could look at her, too.

“Yeah, why?” Glimmer winced slightly as her voice sounded way too nervous to match her words.

“You tensed up, sweetheart. Is everything alright?”

“Glim baby?” 

Glimmer sighed. “I just...I remembered there was a question I forgot to ask. But you totally don’t have to answer it!” she added quickly. 

The other two shared a look with one another. “No, no. It’s obviously an important question if it’s still bothering you now,” Adora said, reaching her arm out to Glimmer to brush her knuckles lightly against her arm. 

Glimmer took a deep breath. “What happened?”

At their blank look, she clarified, “To the baby, I mean.”

A sad look passed over them. Adora decided to take the reins in answering again. “They were taken away from us.”

“Oh. I guess...I guess I should have expected that. How long after?”

“Almost immediately,” Catra responded, her second statement almost a whisper, “We never even got to hold them.”

Glimmer remembers, then, how overwhelmed the two of them had been after Mara was born, how hard they had cried holding their not-so-firstborn child for the first time, and the second time, and third and fourth and so on. She also remembers the story they’d told her a few years ago, the one that had her sobbing as she held them tight in her lap. _A sudden event that had changed their lives_ , she thought, _Being forced to give up your child certainly counts for that. No wonder the two of them had been so shaken about it_. “Where do you think they are?”

“Somewhere in one of the Horde nurseries. They’d be about 12 now.”

“Is that why you guys always seem like you’re looking for something there?”

“Yeah. We-we didn’t get much of a glimpse of them. We barely even know what they _look_ like,” Adora said defeatedly, before perking up slightly, “ _But_ we do have one detail memorized.” She looked down at Catra with an enthusiasm tinged with desperation. 

Catra nodded. “They had this little mark in their fur. It was on their right paw. It was much darker than the rest of their fur. We were able to spot it when they were cleaning the baby up and taking them out of the room. The shape was uh, what’d we say it looked like?”

“Rogelio’s head.”

“Yeah.”

Glimmer scanned her memory, and realized something. “Oh! Is that why you looked so disappointed about that Magicat kid’s age and appearance?”

“Yeah,” Adora replied, “No mark, too old. They weren’t…” She hesitated. “Y’know, we never gave them any sort of name. We’ve just been referring to them as ‘the baby’.”

Catra pursed her lips. “Oh. You’re right.”

Glimmer watched them stew over this, and thought about it for a second. “Rohead?” They stared at her. “Y’know, for the mark?” They kept staring. “Or, I don’t know, Paw Mark?” They stared at each other, now.

“Eh.”

“It’s better.”

Glimmer snorted. “Thank you. I’m here all week.”

As they laughed in response, someone knocked on the door. Glimmer called out to them, “Come in.” The person at the door opened it.

Instead of a guard, like they were expecting, it seemed as though there were no one there at all. They had to look a bit further down to find their visitor, a small blonde Magicat clutching a miniature stuffed version of her mother’s steed. “Hi,” the kitten said, sheepishly.

“Hey, little claws,” Catra replied softly, “What’s up?”

Mara shuffled her foot against the floor. Her parents all looked at each other in affectionate exasperation. She always did that when she wanted to cuddle, but didn’t wanna admit it because of how “tough” she was. 

Adora bit the bullet to save her the misery, “Hey, we were missing you over here. You wanna come and cuddle us so we feel better?” Mara looked up and grinned, nodding her head. She fully entered the room, closing the door behind her, then sprinted over to the bed. She only reached the halfway point before electing to teleport directly above the bed, landing between Catra and Glimmer.

Glimmer got her first, and picked her up to hold her close. “Hey, wild child, who made you so cute?”

Mara huffed, her cheeks puffing out, further exacerbating their redness, “I’m not cute, Momma!”

Catra hummed, “No, you’re not.” Mara looked proud at that, but Catra smirked deviously, “You’re adorable.”

Mara gasped, affronted, “Maaaaa!”

Adora added to the offense by saying, “The most precious little girl in the world.”

Mara glared, “Mom!” As they all laughed in response, she held her breath in anger for a few seconds, before letting it all out in a sigh of defeat. “I’m not tired.” 

Her mothers all laughed again. They knew that that was another bit from what they referred to as the Mara Language; saying that she wasn’t tired even when no one asked, which usually meant that she was just a few seconds away from falling asleep.

Sure enough, she drifted off in her mother’s arms mere moments later. They all stared at her, watching the way her little chest rose and fell, and listening to her loud snores. Glimmer, still looking at their little one, spoke, “Thank you.”

“Huh?” They looked up at her. Mara didn’t stir; she was far too heavy a sleep for a conversation between her mothers to wake her up. 

“Thank you,” Glimmer said again, “For telling me about them. For giving me her. For letting me love you, and loving me in return. Just...thank you. I promise, I’m gonna do whatever I can to help you find them, so they can be with you guys again, with _us_. Their family.”

They stared at her in wonder. Their eyes were glossy, tears wetting them. She grabbed their hands, Catra’s from under Mara, and Adora’s from above Catra. She smiled at them.

As they all relaxed again, laying together in their little nest of love, there was a feeling of peace that settled over them. When Glimmer felt herself start to drift off, she smiled, welcoming dreams of piles of kittens, one with a head of messy blonde hair and wild eyes, and one with a mark the shape of a lizard’s head on their hand.


End file.
